So posting has been a little light. But work is so busy that it’s to the point where I choose between updating the blog, and writing my 1,000 words. Sorry, dear reader. The novel wins out.

This week I’ve really been trying to focus on finding a unique voice for each character. I’m organizing the characters by chapter, since the book is really about all their different perspectives on each other and the things happening to them. This makes it all the more important that each one sound and feel different, yet have a consistent voice throughout.

This week I also missed two days. Gasp! I know, I was driving from Chicago to Michigan with my one-year old son, as well as attending graduation ceremonies. I just couldn’t sneak away to get the time. So I’m going to write an extra couple-hundred words a day from now on until I catch up.

Official Word Count - 39,155

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If you write for yourself, your family or your friends, stop reading. You won’t ever need to get a thick skin to protect yourself from criticism. Everyone will gush over your work, they’ll read it cover to cover, and you’ll feel pretty good about yourself.

Once you open your work up to strangers, however, look out. And if you write for a business or a client, be prepared to be dragged across hot burning coals and have every single word you write be stomped into the dirt.

O.K., so it’s not that bad. But if you want to sell your writing or make your writing better, you have to learn how to deal with criticism.

Probably the most important and obvious tip I can give is to realize criticism is not about who you are as a person or your ability as a writer. It’s always about the writing, which is not you. If someone is coming down hard on you, ignore them. The kinds of comments that are directed at you personally aren’t constructive, and you probably shouldn’t get feedback from this person anyway, since it’s not helping you.

That’s a lot easier said than done. Here are some tips to help you get to that point where you realize it’s not personal.

• Get feedback from someone you know and whose opinion you trust. They’ll be the most likely to give you good feedback and make you feel good at the same time.
• Get feedback often. The more you expose yourself to criticism, the easier it is to take it. Once you get over that initial fear of showing someone your work, it’s semi-smooth sailing.
• Write with passion and from the heart. Revise and take other people’s notes with your head. The less you allow your personal feelings into the editorial process, the better.
• Realize it’s all about making you a better writer. If someone is picking apart everything in your latest story, remember that you can still learn something from it, regardless of whether or not you agree with it.
• Remember, you don’t have to take every piece of criticism. You can disagree with what someone says. Just make sure it’s because it’s the right thing to do, and not because your heart is telling you to not take criticism.

How have you dealt with criticism in the past?

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This week has been exceedingly difficult, just because things are piling up at work. It’s my day job to write, and that’s an entirely different game than writing for yourself.

There’s the personal editing and struggle I go through just to get to something I want to share with the team.

Then, it gets ripped apart and analyzed by everyone on my team. Then, after that, it goes to the clients for further review and scrutiny. Hopefully at the end of it all the work is much better than it would have been, but it’s a slog trying to get it done.

Which made me think, I wonder how much of my fiction writing could improve if it was subject to the same level of critique.

I think it might, but at the same time, it’d be impossible to achieve. The reason writing for a client gets beaten around so much is because ultimately, it’s their words living somewhere. No one looks at my client’s website and thinks “Oh, that Jeff. He’s such a hack.” They see my client’s business, and no one really knows that I’m attached to it.

With my fiction writing, it is my name attached to it. The only one who can care enough to make it better or worse is myself.

Looks like I’m on my own.

Official Word Count - 35,083

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So I started drooling when I came across this little nugget of info on Designorati. If you’re a visual creative, you’ve probably heard that Adobe just released their new creative software suite, CS3.

Part of the CS3 suite is Premiere Pro, a video editing program, and After Effects, a great tool for doing post work and onlining your film.

They aren’t being released until the summer, unlike their print and web software. In the meantime, you can download a beta version for free and try it out!

I’ve got mine all downloaded, and I can’t wait to play around. I don’t know if there are any restrictions (watermarks, limited functionality, etc.) but it looks like you get the full power of these great, industry standard apps.

Enjoy!

Get Adobe Premiere Pro C3 Free Beta Version

Get Adobe After Effects Pro CS3 Free Beta Version

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If you do freelance work and wish you could be more efficient, go here. It’s filled with all sorts of tools that’ll help you keep track of your time, manage your projects, keep up on invoicing, get stock assets and many more things.

Now, are you going to ever use ALL these tools? No. Remember, you’ve got to set aside time for being creative and marketing yourself. I’ve always found a big danger in playing with the latest, greatest fun web widgets is that I spend too much time optimizing, and less time actually writing.

Pick through the list, find something useful and use it to save time. Many of the tools do the same thing.

101 Essential Freelancing Resources found on Lifehacker.

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As I’m getting deeper into the story, I’m surprised by the character I identify with most.

My novel has four main characters. When I was outlining, there was definitely one black sheep I had trouble with.

I wasn’t sure about her story. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find a voice for her.

But now that I’ve had a chance to explore what’s going on in her world a little, I find I like her quite a bit. She’s actually been the easiest one to create a unique voice for, and right now I think her story arc has the most layers to it.

Odd also, because she’s the character that’s the least like me.

Onward and upward, the first draft is a fourth done.

Official Word Count - 27,357

Novel Writing | 1 Comment »

Do you plot out your novels on notecards? I did too, until I stumbled across Google Notebook.

Some problems I ran into using paper notecards:

• Cards get scrambled out of order
• A pain to refer back to when I’m actually writing the book
• Don’t always have them on me in case inspiration strikes

So I decided to try out Google Notebook to plot out my current novel. It worked fantastically. Here are some tips and tricks you can use to not only plot out your own novel, but also to get the most out of Google Notebook.

Quickly Add Scenes

You can get the bare bones of your novel in place quickly by just clicking the blank space in your notebook. I rifled through all my ideas for scenes to get a rough idea for how the book would lay out.

Move Scenes Around

Once you get your first draft of an outline down, I always found it hard with notecards (and other electronic programs) to move scenes around without having to reread all the other scenes to make sure I knew where I was at.

With Google Notebook, you can drag and drop the individual notes you make. It ends up being very easy to scan your other scenes and play around with a different order.

Organize Your Chapters

You can add sections to your notebook and start grouping your scenes into chapters. The best part is you can still drag and drop individual scenes into whatever section you want.

Just click in the open space like you’re going to add a new note, then click “Add Section”. Drag any existing notes you want in there or start making new ones.

Use Google Notebook for Character Development Too

If you’re struggling to find a good way to keep all the notes on your characters in one place, Google Notebook has you covered there too. Just create a new notebook for all the different things you need to write a novel. Plot outline, character development, etc.

You can make each section a separate character. Now you can keep all your character notes and plot notes open while you’re writing your novel. Makes it pretty easy to keep track of everything if you can just tab back and forth through what you need.

Export an Outline to Google Docs

Once you have the outline done, it’s time to write the darn thing. Google Docs is a simple, web-based word processing tool that you can access from any computer with an internet connection.

Just click “Tools” in Google Notebook and you can export it to Google Docs. Then you’ve got everything laid out for you in a single sheet. You can use this as a guide as you write, or you can print it off as a handy outline to mark up.

Write or Get Critique From a Friend

Another great feature of Google Notebooks is that you can share your notebook as an editable document, or as a static HTML page.

So if you’ve got a writing partner and can’t sit together, you can collaborate online using the same notebook easily. You can even color code what you add so that you know who made what changes.

Or, you can send it to whoever you want as a HTML page and have them critique it for you.

Just click “Sharing Options” in the upper right corner.

Go to Google Notebook

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So, Jenn over at All Freelance Writing Jobs wants to know what kind of writing keeps me coming back for more.

It’s a tough decision. I’m a web copywriter during the day, and I like that enough to take the constant abuse of creative directors and clients. But when I think about my dream job, I’m not necessarily at a desk in an office thinking about how to make a “Next” button friendlier.

My first love was fiction. Right now I’m devoting 1,000 words a day of output to that, and I’m loving every second of it. I really like the story and characters I have going. Plus, who wouldn’t like to be riding the bus and see a complete stranger reading a book with your name on it.

By the narrowest of margins, screenwriting comes out on top. This probably wouldn’t be the case if I didn’t also like directing. Because I can actually make the shorts I write, I can see my vision come to life just how I want it. I can write novels ’till I’m blue in the face and never get published. With the new digital age and screenwriting, I can make a finished project and release it myself.

Let’s see, I’ll tag:

Robert James Russell at Midwestern Gothic

J. Ott over at Making the Movie

Susan Falter Barnes at The Get Known Now Blog

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Are you excited about what you’re writing?

If it’s a novel, screenplay - whatever, and you find yourself just plunking down words to get to your daily word count, you’re in trouble.

You’ll know what you’re putting down on paper is workable and contains some scrap of emotion if you feel it while you’re writing it.

There’s really no way to force yourself to feel, it’s something that just kind of happens. The best thing you can do to inject more emotion into yourself while you’re writing is to really get into the heads of the characters.

Let’s say you’re writing about a first date. Go back to all your past experiences and friends experiences. What were you feeling in that moment? Can you distill it into a scene, conversation, or even better, a sentence?

String a few of these together, and now you’ll be writing with emotion. And once you’re in the heat of the moment, the words will probably just come out. Go with it. Get it out, and worry about making it polished later. It’s more important to capture the raw, essence of the emotion in the first draft.

Official Word Count - 20,980

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How good are you trying to be?

Were you riding the bus one day, reading over the shoulder of a forty year-old woman entranced by her chick-lit novel when you said, “I can do better than that!”

Did you sit down at home, pop in the movie “Bats” and think “I should be a screenwriter?”

I’ve got news for you, if you shoot to be better than bad, you’re going to end up with nothing more than crap.

Watch your favorite movie. Re-read your favorite book. What is it about these pieces of work that you find so compelling. Right about now you should say to yourself, “I wish I could do something this good.”

Then go for it. If you use all the dredge and drivel out there as you’re measuring stick, your always going to fall short to solid, fantastic work.

Forget all the hacks and let them do their thing. You’ve got higher aspirations. The only thing you should learn from bad work is for a perfect example of what not to do.

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